Berio violin duets - an introduction
(2019)
author(s): Joseph Puglia
published in: KC Research Portal
The 34 Duetti of Luciano Berio were inspired by the 44 Duos of Bartók. Just as Bartók intended to introduce young musicians to his style, so did Berio attempt the same. Berio's focus however, was on finding a more modern set of techniques and colors that the violin could create, and he used these pieces for children to illustrate his own ideas of theater and dramaturgy in music. Because his ideas of theater consist of putting two completely different ideas together to make a third reality, the 1st and 2nd violin parts in his duets often sound as if they are in totally different worlds – with different dynamics, tone colors, and sometimes even tempi. This results in a novel approach to chamber music in which each partner is equal, but also very independent of the other. A beginning student can therefore contribute just as much musical value to a piece (indeed, sometimes much more) than a seasoned professional. Since Berio doesn't specify the level or age that the student needs to be in order to play these pieces, this allows for a lot of freedom in the choice of performers. The same piece can sound totally different if performed by two professionals, two young students, or one young student and one professional.
Additionally, each duet is dedicated to a friend, musician, or person that Berio admired, and can be likened to a musical portrait. Berio said that the pieces were inspired by the “fragile thread of daily occasions” and therefore the pieces are not true portraits, but sometimes illustrations of an event which happened, a shared history between Berio and the dedicatee, or as in the case of Stravinsky, Bartók, or Boulez, an homage to a piece composed by that composer.
Finally, the Duetti serve not only to introduce young musicians to Berio's style, but the full performance of the 34 duets is also a great introduction of 20th century musical concepts to audiences. Since each duet is very short, there is much variety in a performance of the works, and since each duet focuses on one or two 20th century techniques while still staying in a very familiar tonal world, audiences can be challenged while still maintaining a handhold on familiar territory.
Approaching a Rhetorical Performance of Late 18th Century Keyboard Music from the Methods of john Walker
(2019)
author(s): Anders Muskens
published in: KC Research Portal
Student Number
3105008
Supervisor(s)
Anna Scott, Jed Wentz
Title
Approaching a Rhetorical Performance of Late 18th Century Keyboard Music from the Methods of john Walker
Research Question
How can we apply declamatory principles from late 18th century English treatises to historical performance of late 18th century solo keyboard music?
Summary
There is no doubt that the art of classical rhetoric played an important role in the conception and performance of music in the 18th century. In order to better understand how to perform rhetorically in an historically informed manner, an understanding of declamation as it was understood in the late 18th century is key. This thesis uses the written methods of English actor-turned-elocutionist, John Walker, as the basis to proposing a rhetorical approach to late 18th century solo keyboard repertoire. Linguistic concepts of sense, structure, style, and delivery (acting) are likened to analogous concepts in galant music and supported with statements from musical treatises and examples from musical works. Two main performance case studies are considered for comparison: the first linguistic, being Walker’s 1787 annotated version of Edward IV’s speech from William Shakespeare’s "Richard III"; and the second musical, being the Adagio movement of Joseph Haydn’s 1794 Keyboard Sonata Hob. XVI:52. It is hoped that this investigation will not only expand the horizons of the author’s solo performances, but will also provide interesting and useful tools for other musicians.
Short Bio
Anders Muskens began modern piano studies at the age of 4 in Edmonton, Canada. He graduated from the Royal Conservatory of Music, Toronto under the tutelage of Dr. Irina Konovalov. He now studies fortepiano and harpsichord at the Royal Conservatoire of The Hague with Dr. Bart van Oort, Petra Somlai, and Fabio Bonizzoni. He received numerous awards including: 1st place at the Early Music Young Ensemble Competition at the London Exhibition of Early Music 2018 in a duo with soprano Tinka Pypker; and the „Hofkapelle Elbe-Elster“ prize at the „Gebrüder Graun Prize“ 2018 with his ensemble Das Neue Mannheimer Orchester.
Practices of Performing at Senegalese Sabar Dance Events
(2019)
author(s): Elina Seye
published in: RUUKKU - Studies in Artistic Research
In my PhD thesis Performing a Tradition in Music and Dance (2014), I analyzed sabar dance events as ‘places’ for (re)constructing social relationships, identities, and tradition. In these celebrations, the participants in a sense perform themselves and their relationships to others present, embodying communal conceptions of their social roles and the related norms and values, but sometimes also challenging them. These performances of self can thus primarily be identified as cultural performatives, following Butler, but they still happen in the frame of the dance event, which allows also expressions deviating from the performatives of everyday situations. Here, I will consider how the modes of performance in sabar dance events can be characterized in addition to the obvious repetition and variation of traditional dance genres. Additionally, I will reflect on the value of practical involvement in performance as a methodological tool in ethnographic fieldwork.
Strategies of Fiction
(2019)
author(s): Stephen Bain
published in: RUUKKU - Studies in Artistic Research
Fictional Worlds as Structures for Public Space Performance is an exposition that fractures into multiple parts, text, performance, spatial design, and creative writing. Fiction is seen as a device for creating shared experience, a familiar process in the performing arts but also observed in the public domain of politics, where a key example is taken to discuss the dynamics of how fiction may be both symbol and action. Relating aesthetics to politics through fiction as a method, a collective influence is confirmed by the event.
Fiction is split into various strategies in a poetic reflection on archetypes of space, proposed as 8 distinct fiction-types that open the way for common understanding. Using the format of a screenplay, 8 types are fleshed out and supported by reflections on influential international artworks and theories. Finally these types are used as a tool to analyse my own public space performance experiments in Auckland, New Zealand.
A Singing Orna/Mentor's Performance or Ir/rational Practice
(2019)
author(s): Elisabeth Laasonen Belgrano
published in: RUUKKU - Studies in Artistic Research
This exposition is an orna/mentor’s doing, an attempt, an essay, a performance, a line-of-thinking, a series of relations, a performance-research-model, a beginning of an orna/mentor’s manifesto. It might appear chaotic for some, and inviting for others. Its aim is to allow for the visitor to dive into the ‘orna’ (as in ‘urn’ meaning: an ornamented vase) mentored by a vocal performer. The exposition performs the raw and asymmetric intimacy of a research process searching to penetrate into (while at the same time radically opening up) that-which-is-yet-to-be-known. The performative caring has created an endless amount of philosophizing figures/sounds-in-themselves, as ornamented variations of an original musical score; a translation of one doing of another doing of another doing. Included in this exposition - as yet another ornamented variation – is a ‘peer-review-dialogue’ (a Q & A) between the orna/mentor and a Chorus of Unknown Reviewers. This dialogue has been included to clarify (or perhaps confuse even more) some of the questions that might arise in the mind of the visitor while moving through the exposition.
Return to the Site of the Year of the Rooster
(2019)
author(s): Annette Arlander
published in: RUUKKU - Studies in Artistic Research
This exposition is centred around a video essay, which uses some parts of Animal Years, a series of one-year performance-projects recorded on Harakka Island in the years 2002-2014, as examples to create a form of "digital autotopography". Returning to the site of the performance Year of the Rooster (2006) and Christmas of the Rooster - Tomten (2006) twelve years later serves as a starting point for reflections on the materiality of the site, on the birches growing there as co-performers, and on revisiting and assembling old works as way of doing things with performance.
Percussion Theatre: a body in between
(2019)
author(s): Jennifer Torrence
published in: Norwegian Academy of Music
What does the musician become when sound and instrumental thinking are no longer privileged as the foundation of a musician's practice? In what ways does an emphasis on the musician's body cause music to approach art forms such as theatre and performance? After a generation of pioneering work from Mauricio Kagel, Dieter Schnebel, John Cage and many others, where is the theatrical and the performative in music today? How do its recent developments shape, alter, constitute a musician's artistic practice? Through her research, Jennifer Torrence argues that this type of music demands the musician assume a different understanding and relation to their instrument and therefore a different relation to their body. This relation calls for new ways of making and doing (new artistic practices) that foreground the body as a fundamental performance material. Through an emphasis on the body, the musician emerges as a performer.
This exposition is a reflection on the research project Percussion Theatre: a body in between. This project is comprised of a collection of new evening-length works that approach the theatrical and performative in contemporary music performance. These works are created with and by composers Wojtek Blecharz, Carolyn Chen, Neo Hülcker, Johan Jutterström, Trond Reinholdtsen, François Sarhan, and Peter Swendsen. The exposition contains reflections on recent developments in contemporary music that mark a mutation of the executing musician into a co-creating performer, as well as images, artefacts, videos, and texts that unfold the process of creating and performing the work that constitutes this project. The ambition of this exposition is that through the exposure of a personal artistic practice an image of a larger field may come into focus.
Frozen Moments in Motion – An Artistic Research on Digital Comics
(2019)
author(s): Fredrik Rysjedal
connected to: Norwegian Artistic Research Programme
published in: Faculty of Fine Art, Music and Design, University of Bergen
What are the concepts of motion in digital comics? What types of motion can be used in comics and how does motion affect the presentation, the story and even the reader/viewer?
This project is a part of the Norwegian Programme for Artistic Research, and it's executed at the Bergen Academy of Art and Design, today called Faculty of Fine Art, Music and Design at the University of Bergen.
En søken etter en utvidet fysisk tolkning av vokal samtidsmusikk og av opera
(2019)
author(s): Silje Marie Aker Johnsen
published in: Research Catalogue
"En søken etter en utvidet fysisk tolkning av vokal samtidsmusikk og av opera" er Silje Aker Johnsens kunstneriske doktorgradsarbeid ved Operahøgskolen, Kunsthøgskolen i Oslo.
Det kunstneriske doktorgradsarbeidet fokuserer på kombinasjonen av bevegelse og vokalutøvelse i forskjellige sammenhenger og i ulike uttrykk. Silje Aker Johnsen har bakgrunn fra det klassiske musikkfeltet, opera og samtidsmusikk, men også som danser og i tverrkunstnerisk scenekunst.
Hovedlinjene i prosjektet følger prosesser og refleksjoner rundt material- og verkutvikling og den tverrfaglige utøverens potensielle roller i ulike utviklingssituasjoner. Refleksjonsarbeidet diskuterer ulike plasseringer i sjangere, grader av medskapende virksomhet, aspekter av forberedelse, trening og improvisasjon i utviklingen av en praksis.
Disposisjonen beskriver, og reflekterer rundt, prosessene i hovedverkene i prosjektet:
Her
av Erik Dæhlin og Silje Aker Johnsen.
Dette verket har gått som en rød tråd gjennom doktorgradsarbeidet og blitt bearbeidet og vist i flere versjoner. "Her" er også en del av komponist og regissør Erik Dæhlins kunstneriske doktorgradsarbeid ved Norges Musikkhøgskole, "Shared Space - mot en relasjonell, prosessuell og intermedial kompositorisk praksis."
Her, KHiO, 2017
Her, Scene 2, Den Norske Opera og Ballett, 2018
Her, utdrag, KHiO, 2018, som en del av Aker Johnsens avsluttende presentasjon av sitt doktorgradsarbeid, forestillingen "En søken.. "
I forestillingen "En søken…" arbeidet Aker Johnsen med tre ulike samarbeidspartnere og innganger til sammenføyningen av vokalutøvelse og bevegelse: I tillegg til samarbeidet med komponist og regissør Erik Dæhlin, inkluderte dette et verk i samarbeid med koreograf Mia Habib og en adapsjon av et koreografisk partitur av Janne-Camilla Lyster:
Sedimenter
av Mia Habib og Silje Aker Johnsen
Tulipan
Koreografisk partitur av Janne-Camilla Lyster, Adapsjon av Silje Aker Johnsen
Opera:
Ballerina
kammeropera, av komponist Synne Skouen, librettist Oda Radoor og regissør Hilde Andersen, er blant hovedverkene innen opera. Operaen ble bestilt av Den Norske Opera og Ballett og oppført ved Den Norske Opera og Ballett i 2017.
Disposisjonen benytter en kombinasjon av ulike tekster og videorefleksjoner, samt videodokumentasjon av utvalgte verk, til å kommunisere refleksjonsarbeidet.
The Music of Johann Rudolph Ahle
(2018)
author(s): Jacob Gramit
published in: KC Research Portal
Name: Jacob Gramit
Main Subject: Early Music Singing
Research Supervisor: Kathryn Cok
Title of Research: The Music of Johann Rudolph Ahle: Editorial and Performance Issues Surrounding the 1658 Neu-Gepflanzter Thüringischer Lustgarten
Research Question: How can creating a critical-performance edition of the music of Johann Rudolph Ahle impact my performance of his music?
Summary of Results:
Having always been drawn to German Music of the seventeenth century, I found a collection of music from Johann Rudolph Ahle (1623-1673) that was largely unknown and unperformed. This enabled me to start from nothing when creating an edition and researching Ahle's life and music; meaning I could see what effect the process would have on my performance. By doing detailed research into a specific collection, looking at both his compositional style and his use of pre-existing texts and music, I discovered Ahle's seeming fascination with personal spirituality, leading to new ideas for the performance of his music.
Biography:
Originally from Edmonton Canada, Jacob Gramit is currently living in the Netherlands, pursuing a Master’s Degree in The Hague, studying with Pascal Bertin, Peter Kooij, Dorothee Mields, Robin Blaze, and Lenie van den Heuvel. Recently, he both prepared the edition and performed in Michael Chance’s production of Cavalli’s Giasone, and upcoming projects include Handel’s Dixit Dominus with Holland Baroque and Cappella Amsterdam.
Before moving abroad, Jacob lived in Vancouver, where he still performs - most recently he performed in the 2017 Vancouver Bach Festival, and coordinated the Summer Festival of Sacred Music at Christ Church Cathedral, which he will return to run in 2018. He attended the University of British Columbia (BMus, 2012), and sang for three seasons with musica intima, a professional and self-directed vocal ensemble.
Deliver the meaning - Performance expression in a physical shape
(2018)
author(s): Martje van damme
published in: KC Research Portal
Name: Martje van Damme
Main Subject: Classical Piano
Research Supervisor: Stefan Petrovic
Title of Research: Deliver the meaning – Performance expression in a physical shape
Research Question: How are physical movements related to the expression in music?
Summary of Results:
During a performance I am aware of the meaning and ideas of the music and as a pianist I aim to deliver that meaning to the audience. The physical movements of the performer also have a strong influence on the way that meaning is perceived by the listeners. One of my main aims is to achieve a unity between my physical movements and expression, as well as a certain freedom and flexibility of my physical approach to piano playing. Over the course of this research I conducted experiments with various excerpts of the pieces I play, all of which represent a significant transition within the piece. These experiments gave me a good overview of what the influence of the physical movement is in relation to the expression and perception of a performance. What I observed from these experiments, reflecting on my aims, is that moving out of my comfort zone and expressing the meaning of the music, also by more exaggerated physical movements, made me feel free. It helped me discover new possibilities of playing and interpreting the music. Secondly, I realised that, by embedding musical ideas in my physical movements, technically challenging passages were not that difficult anymore. They became subservient to the musical ideas and character of the music. Thirdly, the exaggeration of physical movements sometimes created breathing space on very different spots compared to my usual way of playing. In these moments, I suddenly became more flexible. Finally, this process made me aware of the fact that my personal experience and the perception of the audience often differ widely. As a result of this inquiry, I am now more aware of the opportunities to express ideas that lead to a convincing performance.
Biography:
Martje van Damme was born in Kampen, the Netherlands. She began her piano studies at the age of nine. In 2006, she enrolled into the “Academie voor Muzikaal Talent” in Utrecht, studying with Henk Ekkel. She took part in the Sommercourse Musik Zentral in Bad Aussee, Austria, several times. In 2011 she was participant during the Perpetuum Mobile Competition in Hilversum, where she won the second prize. She has participated in masterclasses from Martyn van den Hoek, David Kuyken, Klára Würtz, Andreas Woyke, Kamilla Bystrova, Helen Grizos and Dmitri Paperno. She has completed her BMus, studying with Paolo Giacometti at the Robert Schumann Musikhochschule in Düsseldorf. Together with the mezzo-soprano Eva Marti, she twice won the third prize during the Schmolz und Bickenbach Chambermusic Competition. She participated during the URIM (liedduo masterclasses) in Brussels and received lessons from Anne Sofie von Otter, Christianne Stotijn, Eildert Beeftink and Julius Drake. Currently she is pursuing her master’s degree with David Kuyken at the Royal Conservatoire in The Hague.
Performative Well-Being: Conditions of Sharing
(2018)
author(s): Alexander Komlosi
published in: RUUKKU - Studies in Artistic Research
Since Ruukku 8 has asked us to consider “conditions of sharing”, it seems apt, and interesting, to start this exposition about the conditions of sharing of performative well-being through a dialogue with the conditions of sharing that the Ruukku 8 editors, Mika, Tero, and Leena, have offered us. Here we go!
ANYWHERE ELSE BUT ME, art and introspection
(2018)
author(s): Antonio Olaio
published in: Research Catalogue
Having Duchamp's epitaph as a starting point, the exposition “Nowhere else but me (art and introspection)” deals with some of the most constant aspects of my research as an artist, through series of paintings, videos, songs, where the relationship between art and self-awareness is more evident and plays a central role in their the conceptual process and in their conceptual scope. But here, instead of emphasizing a unique subjectivity, we realise that an artist’s subjectivity might be a place, a place anywhere. A public space, potencially ubiquitous, as both mind and images might be.
Can a drawing be rehearsed?; or, There's no bowing in performance art
(2018)
author(s): William Platz
published in: Journal for Artistic Research
This exposition combines a practice-led research project titled 'Tullah and Tom: A Drawing Affair' with a reflective analysis of ‘performance drawing’—a tag deployed with increasing frequency in drawing research. Drawing has always been hybridised and concocted with other disciplines and research frameworks, but its contemporary associations with performance art, expanded theatre and the performing arts are under-examined. The co-option of drawing by performance lacks extensive critical engagement, as do significant aspects of the performance drawing process. The subject of this exposition is two of these unexamined aspects—rehearsal and the curtain call. Although there are analogies to be drawn with theatre, this research resists analogy and focuses on these phenomena within the context of drawing practice. Drawing rehearsals and curtain calls are peculiar and specific activities within the performance/drawing nexus, and their examination has yielded significant insight. One private and one public, these ancillary and parasitical processes bracket the performance drawing and fulfil pivotal roles in enacting, re-enacting, and disenthralling the drawing from its performance matrix.
How to Use Gay Nazis in Job Interviews: Queer Media, Striptease-Lectures and the Art of Existential Sodomism
(2018)
author(s): Alexandros Papadopoulos
published in: Journal for Artistic Research
A video-performance on homoerotic nazism is transformed into a deranged guide of professional and erotic survival. Based on an actual interview with a gay Nazi, this project encompasses academic essays, lecture-performances and a series of digital and urban sensations. All these forms expression explore how social media can stage a horny war against fear, hatred and uncertainty. Physically and intellectually provocative, this is an analysis of the relationship between facebook, austerity-horror and queer desire. This polymedia project includes a short clip and ritualistic acts of self-exposure. This dialogue between storytelling and art-theory re-stages the shocking testimonies of the experimental short-film/video-performance (The Homonazi Effect). Centered on factual -- violent, flirty and cyber -- encounters with Athens-based gay neo-Nazis, the Homonazi Effect encompassed an alliance of platforms: blogs, queer festivals, popular magazines, academic writing and social media. Visual components of the artwork, and particularly, the author’s impersonations of his ‘homo-Nazi’ interlocutor were re-used and re-adapted with various storytelling and self-writing formats – co-creating a fragmented intermedia collage of confession and defeat. Social Media rituals twisted the meaning, context and impact of the initial story – re-situating its visual dramatics within an aesthetic backdrop of failed job interviews, zero-hour contracts and traumatic escapism. A cinematic narration dissolves into a project of self-writing, one that establishes an exhibitionistic archiving of failure. The boundaries between fiction and non-fiction, history and imagination and digital and non-digital dramaturgy collapse. A new queer utopia is now disruptively staged on the performative intersection of precarious routine and austerity-age dreamland.
PER-FORM - the performative essay and the essayistic performance
(2017)
author(s): Emily Huurdeman
published in: Research Catalogue
Everyone knows what an essay is, or at least everyone think they know what an essay is. But try to define it and you’re most likely at a loss, because the essay is
notoriously difficult to define. It balances between the artistic and the scientific, the experiential and the intellectual, it is labeled as an undefinable non-genre. The essay is experimental and doesn’t fit neatly in pre-defined boxes of genres, just like performance. Among other things they share a process oriented atitude and
are inherently authorial. Having many characteristics in common, I wondered: can performance be essayistic? This research investigates the essay and its connection to performance theoretically, and investigates the essayistic performance artistically.
I have chosen the workspace of the Research Catalogue to present my research in. This enables spatial freedom of form and content and can accomodate both the textual and artistic side of the research equally in the same space.
Systems of Pain/Networks of Resilience (First Compilation)
(2017)
author(s): Meghan Moe Beitiks
published in: Journal for Artistic Research
'Systems of Pain/Networks of Resilience' is a creative exploration of observation and entanglement as tools for negotiating pain. Research on ecology, restoration, and psychology creates a series of videos, images, and performances. How do personal networks of resilience overcome systems of pain, both in human perspectives, and in ecologies? The project explores commonalities in the context of divisive cultural politics.
Artist Meghan Moe Beitiks begins her research with personal interviews. She discusses processes of recovery with people with both personal and professional experiences of trauma and recovery, including an ecological restoration specialist, an animal behaviourist, several survivors of abusive relationships, and many others. Clips from the interviews become the basis for visual and material explorations, generating videos, installations, and images. Stigma and prejudice emerge as barriers to healing – acceptance, observation, and listening, as common tools to accelerate it.
This compilation takes components of Beitiks’s research and arranges them within their own system of exploration. Observers’ perceptions of the work are both assisted and disrupted by audio descriptions. Originally intended to make the works accessible to non-sighted audiences, the descriptions also serve as an exploration of observation and objectivity. A seemingly unrelated pine wallpaper appears to have been unfairly categorised as “masculine,” prompting further questions about categorisation and labelling, as well as depictions of nature. Beitiks’s presence and movement in the work is described as androgynous, their body taking on the narratives described in the interview clips. Boundaries between various disciplines and narratives disappear—we instead experience the labour of connecting disparate entities, despite the limits of our own perceptions.
IN - The creation of an immerive music performance
(2017)
author(s): Jonathan Bonny
published in: KC Research Portal
Name: Jonathan Bonny
Main Subject: Classical Percussion
Research Supervisors: Gerard Bouwhuis, Fedor Teunisse
Title of Research: IN – the creation of an immersive music performance
Research Question:
How can immersive performance concepts be used to create a better connection between a musician and his audience?
Summary of Results:
In my research, I reflected on several aspects of a concert and how I want to communicate with my audience. Throughout the research I realised that finding ways to immerse an audience is easier said than done. My belief in immersion as a tool to guide listeners towards a certain atmosphere, attitude or interpretation is nevertheless still as strong as before. More than ever, I am convinced that this is the way for me to perform. This is particularly the case for contemporary music where inexperienced listeners might appreciate some guidance. This paper aims to inform (performing) readers of the possible (positive and negative) consequences of creating an immersive performance. Creating an immersive performance is difficult. It takes a lot of time, something musicians often do not have. In addition to learning the music, the performer needs time to brainstorm about the kind of immersion that supports the musical idea and does not distract from it. The line between the two is very thin. Once the immersion concept is established it often takes a lot of preparation to execute it. To bring elaborate ideas to fruition musicians will need the help of technicians, engineers, other artists etc. This explains why immersive performances are often organised by ensembles that rely on a bigger production team and budget. The danger here lies in the fact that those teams are often too far removed from the actual content of the music. Realising this made me think about other ways to connect with an audience. I concluded that besides immersion, also attitude and mindset are very powerful tools to decrease the distance between a performer and the audience. Low-tech solutions like literally performing very close to or surrounded by them are very effective to emotionally connect with the audience. Because of the reflective character of the topic I chose to write my dissertation in the form of an essay. My goal is not to present 'the ultimate truth' but to inspire myself and other musicians to create a personal (contemporary) performing identity.
Biography:
Jonathan Bonny (°1992, Bruges) studied classical percussion at the School of Arts in Ghent, the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki and the Royal Conservatoire in The Hague. He is actively building towards a music culture that knows no distinction between genres and he is consistently looking for innovative ways to present contemporary arts to a bigger audience. He co-founded Headliner (adventurous music collective), Kunstenfestival PLAN B (contemporary arts festival) and IHEART (band).
Practicing art - as a habit? / Att utöva konst - som en vana?
(2017)
author(s): Annette Arlander
connected to: Stockholm University of the Arts (SKH)
published in: RUUKKU - Studies in Artistic Research
This bilingual exposition (English and Swedish) presents and problematizes the relationship between artistic practice and habit, describing two projects that deal with repetition and place. The projects 'Solsidan' and 'Summer at Söder' were undertaken during the years 2015-2016 in Stockholm. The idea of repetition and returning to the same site were crucial, as in much of my previous works. Unlike them, neither of these two projects involved performances for camera; in both the actual practice consisted of video recording the view. The shift in emphasis from an artistic practice aiming to produce an artwork, into an activity undertaken mainly as an exercise, an activity, could be seen as a strand in the general trend in contemporary art since the 1960s and accentuated in this century towards valuing the 'working' of art above the work of art as an object. This trend can also be related to research and linked to the preference for various terms like practice as research, performance as research, creative arts research or, indeed, artistic research. - This exposition combines a description of the actual practice, with an encounter with the material generated through that practice and proposes that these works can exemplify artistic research as a speculative practice.
Moving through the double vortex
(2017)
author(s): Jan Schacher, Patrick Neff
published in: Journal for Artistic Research
Music, when performed live, carries the musician's physicality with it, either embedded within the sound or perceivable through the musician's physical presence. A dancer's movement follows dynamics and expresses shapes that are based on musical phrasing principles and 'kinetic melodies'. The two pieces 'Double Vortex' for trombone, movement, and live-electronics and 'Moving Music' for interactive dance and electronic sounds represent experimental devices for exploring the relationships between musical actions and movement, sound and space, and between instrumental and embodied performance modes. With physical tasks and movement components added to open-form, improvised, and compositional work, the otherwise tacit and taken for granted contributions of the performer's corporeal presence is brought to the foreground. By putting the dancer into the role of an instrumentalist and by setting the trombone player into movement, the intrinsic musicality of movement and the dependence between dance and music is shown. By linking sound and movement in both the corporeal and the technological domains, a shifted relationship is established that generates forms of interaction particular to this specific practice. The work on the two pieces is carried out with a focus on artistic creation, and in parallel becomes the object for observation, trace interpretation, and analysis from the perspective of art as research. The exposition further thematises the methods of trace collection and analysis, as well as the making of maps, diagrams, and assemblages, and addresses the scope of this secondary discursive format. In a movement that goes from media trace to text to sketch, from descriptive to contextual to associative juxtaposition, the exposition speculates about – rather than claims to generate – insights and understanding on corporeality in technologically mediated music and dance performances.
Speculation on change from the posture of performance art practice
(2016)
author(s): Tero Nauha
published in: RUUKKU - Studies in Artistic Research
In this exposition, change is perceived as an essential part of the paradigm of immanent capitalism, where the transcending immanence articulates the world of capitalism. In other words, capitalism is a system of exchange and economy, where all arrangements within this system are determined by economic functions, such as exchange or constant flux of matter and meanings articulated by sufficient reason. The capital form of thought - that is to say the philosophy of capitalism - is economic, sufficient and productive. The transcending immanence of capitalism produces the world, the immanence of capitalism is a transcending immanence. This exposition is set to inquire how these forms affect the position of artistic practice.
The focus will be on the possible limits of economic and sufficient forms of thought, or what is speculation in this context. In recent discourse on the paradigm of Anthropocene and speculation of nonhuman thought, the distinction between the human and the ‘world not for humans’, or the world in itself and the experience of the world, have instigated another perspective to regard the immanence of capitalism only as an arrangement or ‘pseudo-immanence’. However, due to space constraints, this exposition is a mere introduction to the ongoing research of mine subsequent to the examination of my doctoral research on schizoanalysis and artistic research held on January 2016. In short, I ask: how can we speculate on the limits of change from the perspective of artistic research including the different arrangements of nonhuman thought and the immanent capitalism?
Peeter Süda - A way to the ‘heart’ of Estonia through Germany
(2016)
author(s): Anna Karpenko
published in: Codarts
Peeter Süda
A way to the ‘heart’ of Estonia through Germany
The history of this research began several years ago, when I visited Tallinn for the first time. There was an International organ festival, and I was a participant of masterclasses. At one concert I heard music by the Estonian composer Peeter Süda. Within a couple of days I bought scores of his organ pieces. Two years later I was invited to play a concert in Tallinn, and I decided to play his pieces “Ave Maria” and Prelude and fugue. After a concert one Estonian organist told me: “Thank you very much, here almost nobody plays the Prelude and fugue! It was nice to hear it”. After some silence he continued: “But, you know, we have our own tradition of performance for these pieces”.
In September of 2013 I became a Master degree student
and decided to dedicate my research work in Codarts to Peeter Süda and his organ music, trying to answer the question: “How can I perform organ pieces by P. Süda, using his ideas and examples of different performance traditions?” I could just play this music without any research, but I liked it so much that I wanted to find out more about this composer and his pieces, I had a lot of questions, I was not sure about what I was doing, but I wanted to perform his music. At the beginning of my research I wished to make a recording of all the completed pieces by P.S., but things which seemed so easy to do became more complicated and interesting, and the research grew and brought me not only new things about this composer and his music, but also about German styles of performing, and other new knowledges and skills.
Performing modern music
(2016)
author(s): Pieter van Loenen
published in: KC Research Portal
Name: Pieter van Loenen
Main Subject: Violin
Research supervisor: Stefan Petrovic
Title of Research: Performing modern music
Research Question: How should you go about performing modern music?
Summary of results:
In this paper, I have approached the fundamental question of how to go about performing modern music from different perspectives. Looking at the writings of Stravinsky and Schoenberg teaches us that there are different ideas about the role a performer should have. Stravinsky would ideally have a performer execute music and not ‘interpret’ it, while Schoenberg expects more expressive input from the performer. However, we have also seen that Stravinsky’s allergy against ‘interpretation’ probably stems from bad experiences with performers interpreting his music the wrong way. Present-day performers agree that his music – or any music, for that matter: the same principles apply to music of all ages – does need to be interpreted by the performer, but in the correct style.
Interpretation of a score is not an exact science. However, that does not mean it cannot go wrong. The prime directive of interpretation is that it should not go against the literal text of the score. Since notation is almost never complete, other methods of interpretation can be used to fill in the gaps. When textual interpretation does not provide enough information, the performer can resort to contextual interpretation: the context of the piece (e.g. sung text, or a structural analysis) or the context of the composer’s work in general, i.e. his style, or language. Other methods that can be used in connection with these basic types of interpretation include speaking with the composer or listening to recordings of the composer or with the composer’s approval. This last method can be problematic, since more information is always required on the value a particular recording should have: is this exactly what the composer intended or is it just acceptable to the composer within the boundaries they set?
All performers I spoke with agreed that the final step a performer should take is to make the music their own. This may seem in contradiction with the principle that a performer should always aim to reproduce the composer’s wishes; a principle that we perhaps inherited from Stravinsky. However, it makes sense when you think about it. When performing a piece, you automatically interpret the score using whatever methods are appropriate when you decide for yourself what the composer must have had in mind when he wrote it down. When you have uncovered this interpretation, and have learned the language of the composer, you must then speak this language to convey the composer’s story (as you interpret it) to the audience. That last line of communication is something entirely in the hands of the performer and that automatically “implicates the performer’s personality”, as Reinbert de Leeuw puts it. This is not problematic or contradictory, as long as the performer, when speaking the language, always remains faithful to the will of the composer.
Biography:
Pieter van Loenen is a Dutch violinist who graduated his bachelor’s cum laude at the Royal Conservatoire in The Hague as a student of Vera Beths. He won 1st prize at the Prinses Christina Competition in 2010 and was awarded 2nd prize and the Audience prize at the Dutch National Violin Competition in 2016. He has appeared as a soloist with several orchestras throughout the Netherlands, including the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, Domestica Rotterdam and the Youth Orchestra of the Netherlands. He has a special affinity with performing contemporary music.
Palestinian Wildlife Series: embodiment in images, critical abstraction
(2016)
author(s): Rania Lee Khalil
published in: Journal for Artistic Research
The expanded cinema performance ‘Palestinian Wildlife Series’ parallels posthuman and postcolonial circumstance, using appropriated imagery of African animals shot directly from a television set in Palestine.
Chronicling the experimentation and process that went into this work of ‘animal-video choreography’, the author interweaves research on Palestine, materialist film, and Afrofuturist thought. The exposition reflects on the impact upon Khalil’s work of women performance artists and avant-garde jazz musician Sun Ra, presenting a journey from text-based and signifier-heavy early experiments to the wordless and open-ended cinematic outcome the author comes to defend.
Drawing on her transition from live performance to moving image production, this exposition will interest those concerned with interdisciplinarity and embodiment in digital imagery. It examines alternative modes of art activism and political uses of abstraction and experimentalism in art, specifically where critical ethnic and postcolonial studies are concerned. It supports discussions of rights and representation within artistic research and beyond from a diasporic perspective.
Hard Times. Lecture Performance as Gestural Approach to Develop Artistic Work-in-Progress
(2016)
author(s): Falk Hubner
published in: RUUKKU - Studies in Artistic Research
Artistic work is often an essential mode of articulation within artistic research, specifically when practice is understood as both source and target domain of the research. Therefore, within the performing arts, both process and product are essential gestures of artistic research and are indeed “justified and critical articulations of an interest in knowledge production."
In this exposition, the format of a lecture performance is investigated and discussed as an explicit articulation through which the process of both artistic work and research is shared, rather than functioning merely as a format for disseminating findings. The format of lecture performance that is investigated here frames the artistic work and theoretical-conceptual framework as two distinct, yet interrelated, processes shared with a conference audience. This includes the deliberate choice for a live performance of artistic work-in-progress, adding a gestural and at times very kinaesthetic aspect to otherwise textually-dominated forms of presentation.
The exposition as such has two focuses that are strongly related to each other, approaching the form of a feedback loop: on the one hand, the creation process of a new experimental performance work by Falk Hübner is investigated. "Hard Times" refers to the title of this artistic work: I will carry you over hard times. The performance itself is part of an artistic research into reduction in music, a continuation of the completed PhD research of the author (Hübner 2014). On the other hand, the lecture performance that employs this artistic work-in-progress as "material" as well as the related discussions with conference audiences is also explored.
The exposition will demonstrate how these conference discussions strongly inform the work process of the specific artistic work in question and attempt to shed an alternative light on the well-known concept of "audience talks", which typically serve to generate feedback and insights into audience perspectives for artists after tryouts or performances of unfinished work. The audiences of conferences are, in most cases, considerably different in nature than "standard" audiences, offering the possibility of insightful input on quite different facets of both artistic work and research process––provoked by the very form of a lecture performance as described above. The exposition suggests that this type of lecture performance, explicitly including the audience at a conference as important source of information, feedback and peer-review, forms a gestural method of artistic research in itself, whose full potential within artistic research is yet to be explored.
Dear Rita
(2016)
author(s): Otso Huopaniemi
published in: RUUKKU - Studies in Artistic Research
"Dear Rita," a series of eight letters to Rita Raley (Professor of English, University of California, Santa Barbara), is a research response to Raley’s presentation “Algorithmic Translations,” which she gave at the "Performance, Technology, Translation" event in New York in April 2015. Organized by The Barnard Center for Translation Studies and the Department of Theatre, the event explored “the theoretical and practical intersections between contemporary technologies of translation and performance.” In addition to presentations by Raley and W. B. Worthen, the symposium included a performance of love.abz, an independent art work and the artistic part of my doctoral degree at University of the Arts Helsinki, Theater Academy.
In "Dear Rita," I use screen captures of the Google Translate website to address through translation the many links and questions that arise from Raley’s insightful presentation. I comment on Raley’s discussion of Eric Zboya’s and Baden Pailthorpe’s work, both visual artists and researchers, and relate them to my own ongoing artistic research project into what I call “live writing.” My inquiry deals with a form of improvisatory, collaborative dramatic writing that employs algorithmic mediation and translation. In asking what the task of the machine translator in performance is or could be, I remark on some of the themes Raley discusses, including those relating to authorship, the nature of algorithmic translation, and the gesture of insistent re-translation of already machine translated text.
Shuttling
(2015)
author(s): Mick Douglas, Beth Weinstein, James Oliver
published in: Journal for Artistic Research
This exposition investigates practice-as-research dynamics through a project titled ‘Shuttle’, from which emerged a practice of ‘shuttling’ as a layered modality for processing methodological artistic research. An international crew of artists, designers, and performance makers enquire into peer-to-peer creative practice development: practices unfolding through the dramaturgy of a twenty-day, four-thousand-mile mobile performance-research journey in the deserts of the North American south-west. We trace the dynamics of a practice-as-research milieu through a suite of artistic operations, performatively elaborated through this rich-media exposition. Through ‘shuttling’, we generate parafunctional performative spaces and temporalities. Our spatio-temporal and sensory mode of research – conditioned, co-created, and situated as a mobile laboratory – posits reflexivity as an embodied practice, as a medium of ‘shuttling’ with the dynamic emergence of creative research practices.
'Beware the Danger of Merging': Conceptual Blending and Cognitive Dissonance in the work of IOU Theatre
(2015)
author(s): Deborah Middleton, Tim Moss
published in: Journal for Artistic Research
This exposition introduces and analyses the work of British-based IOU Theatre, a company that has been exploring intermedial theatre and installation since 1976. IOU's work, we suggest, is characterised by their particular strategies for juxtaposing or fusing images, materials, and artistic media. We explore this aspect of IOU's practice through the lens of emergent cognition by drawing on Fauconnier and Turner's (2002) theory of conceptual blending.
While Fauconnier and Turner's work applies broadly to the process underlying many cognitive acts, their model enables us to develop a nuanced understanding of IOU's particular creative 'blends' and to identify a 'resistance to the blend’ that proves essential to the IOU aesthetic.
The authors have included first-person accounts of some of their own cognitive experiences in response to IOU's work as a way to track the application of conceptual blending in the reception and analysis of an artistic artefact or experience.
The exposition both introduces to a wider readership examples of IOU's oeuvre and proposes a reading of conceptual blending as a tool for understanding creative processes, analysing artistic artefacts, and discussing audience reception – in works that particularly exploit creative collisions of imagery or media. In this way, it is our intention to contribute to artistic research a methodology for analysis and a lens through which some key artistic strategies can be illuminated. Our approach may be of interest to those concerned with the making, analysis, or reception of artistic work that is intermedial in the broadest sense.
Performing Classical Music in the 21st Century
(2015)
author(s): Alistair Sung
published in: KC Research Portal
Name: Alistair Sung
Main Subject: Classical Cello
Research Coaches: Gerard Bouwhuis, Renee Jonker
Title of Research:
Performing Classical Music in the 21st Century
Research Question:
Can a reconsideration of presentation, programming and audience relationship influence
the response to classical music?
Summary of Results:
The financial and cultural climate of the past 50 years has changed the way in which
classical music is perceived. Where once it was valued as a crucial part of a healthy
society, it has now grown isolated from mainstream culture and has been relegated to the
periphery of modern cultural life. This paper will examine how these recent cultural and
social developments occurred and focus on their effects on the performance of classical
music in the 21st century. Through an analysis of new and existing approaches to
performance, a framework will be established which will form the basis of a test concert.
Data gained from this concert will then be analysed in order to explore the possibility of
altering existing concert conventions to respond to the problems facing the performance
of classical music. Research will be presented in the form of a research paper.
Biography:
Alistair began learning the cello in Sydney Australia with Marcus Hartstein and David
Pereira. After attending Newtown High School of Performing Arts, Alistair completed
his Bachelor Music (honours I)/Bachelor Arts (philosophy) at the University of New
South Wales in 2010. On graduating, Alistair was awarded the university medal and his
honours thesis, ‘Variety in Performance: A Comparative Analysis of Recorded
Performances of Bach’s Sixth Suite for Solo Cello’ was co-published in the Empirical
Musicology Review (Ohio State University). Alistair is currently completing a Masters
degree at the Koninklijk Conservatorium in The Hague with Larissa Groeneveld.
What is Music Theater?
(2015)
author(s): Claudia Hansen
published in: KC Research Portal
Name: Claudia Hansen
Main Subject: T.I.M.E.
Research Coaches: Ines van der Scheer and Arnold Marinissen
Title of Research: What is Music Theater? (A definition by a staging musician.)
Research Question:
What is the difference between Music Theater – the modern performance art form and sub-genre of Music Theater – and other hybrid art forms that include musical and theatrical elements grouped under the hypernym ‘Music Theater’? And, is it possible to construct a definition for Music Theater?
Research Process: I used the word ‘music theater’ to describe the hypernym and the word ‘Music Theater’ to describe the subgenre. First, I researched the history and the evolution of the tendencies in Music Theater as hypernym genre and made a historical overview from the beginning of Music Theater up until the emergence of the subgenre ‘Music Theater’. I focused on the development of Music Theater as a subgenre.
In order to find out what the essence of Music Theater is, I analyzed the three major components of Music Theater. I made an overview of challenges that a creator faces in Music Theater and proposed several solutions, which are based on reasoning and existing performances. I tried to see as many performances as possible, which in the widest sense could be considered to be Music Theater, in order to get a wide overview of present day streams and chose six performances that in my opinion are perfect examples to illustrate my concept of Music Theater, and analyzed the various components of these works (such as music, visuals and text) in detail. Finally, I worked towards a new definition of Music Theater.
Summary of Results: Music Theater is a heterogeneous but symbiotic performance genre, which is constructed with a multitude of art forms. The name might suggest that the main focus lies on music and theater. However, any existing art form can be included. The art forms can be divided into three major categories called components: music, theater and visuals. Each art form is equally important as Music Theater is based on the structural equality of voices. Music Theater is constructed by first distilling four innate languages out of the art forms and then applying them to either the same art form or inducing them into another art form: musical language, verbal language, body language and visual language. Each language element has a valuable existence of its own and
is an autonomous element of the performance that adds a particular atmosphere to the whole picture. The languages are either layered in the performance or the aspects of the performance, such as the protagonists (human or material) or the art forms themselves. Music Theater is a performance genre that rather focuses on the impact that it has on the audience than on the compositional art forms. It is outcome-based and not medium-based. This creates space for each audience member to have a completely personal experience and interpretation of the Music Theater performance.
The Performer Composer Relation
(2014)
author(s): Joao Carlos Ferreira de Miranda Santos
published in: KC Research Portal
This Research Investigates the musical relation Between Researcher and Performer in the 18th Century and its philosophical assumptions
Jiří Čart (Georg Czarth) and his Flute Sonata in D minor
(2014)
author(s): Michaela Kouřilová
published in: KC Research Portal
Name: Michaela Kouřilová
Main Subject: Traverso
Research Coaches: Inês de Avena Braga and Donna Agrell
Title of Research: Jiří Čart (Georg Czarth) and his Flute Sonata in D minor
Research Questions:
What is the current status of research on the life of Jiří Čart as an émigré musician? Is it possible to establish bibliographic control of this research, and outline the major deficits in existing literature? By examining Čart's writing for flute, and in particular his D minor Sonata, is it possible to define the characteristics of his compositional style? Is there a further link between his output and his position in various European ensembles, suggesting a development in line with other composers?
Research Process:
Musical emigration was quite characteristic in Czech musical life in the eighteenth century, but was not a completely new phenomenon. Throughout history Czech emigrants, such as Jan Václav Stamic, František Benda or Josef Mysliveček, came to well-deserved fame, but others await a return to modern appreciation. This is surely the case when we consider the life and work of Jiří Čart (1708-c.1778). Despite the contemporary success and reputation, Čart’s name has fallen into insignificance. No thematic catalogue has ever been attempted, leaving performers with no basis for modern performance, and thus audiences with limited opportunities to hear and discover his music. This thesis is potentially a model for further extrapolation of his output and a beginning of a more developed research path. However, the scope of this current document is limited, and therefore centres on Čart’s flute Sonata in D minor.
Summary of Results:
This work provides detailed information about the professional life of the violinist, flutist and composer Jiří Čart, which has yet to be considered in English. This information is embedded in the historical context, providing an overall picture of the social situation in the eighteenth century for émigré musicians from the Czech lands such as Čart. The so- called ‘Czech Musical Emigration’ is a very important ingredient of European music history, which partly influenced the direction and the onset of classicism as we now see it. Čart spent his adult life following his musical talents and opportunities as an émigré. In doing so, he occupied several important posts in major European orchestras and establishments. New details about his life and compositions are uncovered in this work, which is accompanied by a critical edition of his ‘Solo à Flauto Traverso è embalo’ in D minor. This edition was prepared using several variant texts from the eighteenth century, as the sonata exists only in contemporary manuscript copies, as well as a transcription for violin. Disseminated throughout European libraries, the work shows a mature compositional style, with the idiomatic knowledge necessary to craft a showpiece for the flute, allowing the performer to engage with, and enlighten the audience.
Proposing Live Electronics as an Alternative to Larger Performance Set-Ups
(2014)
author(s): Mario Garcia Cortizo
published in: KC Research Portal
Name: Mario García Cortizo
Main Subject: Classical and Contemporary Percussion Research Coaches: Anna Scott and Richard Barrett
Title of Research: Proposing Live Electronics as an Alternative to Larger Performance Set-Ups
Research Question:
How can the inclusion of live electronics reduce required equipment while increasing performer efficiency?
Research Process:
After deciding on the topic of my research, I began reading and collecting all kinds of information related to the historical relationship between the arts and artists during major social and financial crises of the 20th Century. This included books, websites, journal and magazine articles, and museum exhibitions.
In a practical sense, during the first year of the research process I was mainly focused on trying out different things by experimenting with live electronics both in improvised and concert music. For my second year, I have commissioned a new piece involving percussion and live electronics to be performed by composition student Siamak Anvari. I will also be the second person ever to play Hugo Morales’ piece 150pF, “for body capacitance and amplification system.” This piece involves a new instrument that I built myself, consisting of four jack connectors that are split into a four-channel system. As a complement for the program, I am doing a reduction of Frederic Rzewski’s
Coming Together for one single player and an actress.
Summary of Results:
Throughout this text we have seen different proposals that have come out of limitations faced by artists during crisis periods: where creativity is forced to develop in very significant ways in order to keep creating pieces, performances - art that riches everybody, regardless of culture, politics, age, or other aspects. These limitations have provided artists with a lot of new instruments, technologies and techniques: tools that have helped composers and performers to develop new languages and frameworks within which to organize many different materials.
Is very important to point out that the use of non-conventional instruments and live electronics can be considered when there are limitations, but we do not have to use these resources just because of the presence of a limitation, but rather as a part of an on-going research process that leads us to these resources as part of a particular creative solution. After going through all the practical examples experimented with and contained in this research, we can conclude that live electronics and non-conventional instruments are indeed an alternative to larger performance set-ups, not only when the economic situation is unfavorable, but even as a matter of taste.
Pondering with Pines - Miettii Mäntyjen Kanssa - Funderar med Furor
(last edited: 2024)
author(s): Annette Arlander
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
This exposition documents my explorations of pondering with pine trees.
Tämä ekspositio dokumentoi yritykseni miettiä mäntyjen kanssa.
Den här ekspositionen dokumenterar mina försök att fundera med furor.
(Un)Realised Projects
(last edited: 2024)
author(s): Zoe Panagiota (aka Betty) Nigianni
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
"Unlike unrealized architectural projects, which are frequently exhibited and circulated, unrealized artworks tend to remain unnoticed or little known. But perhaps there is another form of artistic agency in the partial expression, the incomplete idea, the projection of a mere intention? Agency of Unrealized Projects (AUP) seeks to document and display these works, in this way charting the terrain of a contingent future."
From AUP-eflux Archive
In painting, the artist can also be a model for the artwork. In performance art, artist and model come together for the performance. The exposition explores the role of figuration in contemporary art.
Some of the material was selected for my participation in conceptual artist's Janine Antoni workshop, "Loving Care", Performance Matters: Performing Idea, Toynbee Studios, Whitechapel Gallery, London, 2010.
With essay about Marina Abramovic's work, published at eflux/Art and Education papers, 2012; originally presented as a conference paper at the Yale Centre for British Art, 2010, slides including the artist's writings.
Fragments of the research for the installation project, developed in the studio and through my participation in urban research workshops, have been archived at AUP-eflux Archive.
Whyte&Zettergren
(last edited: 2024)
author(s): Whyte&Zettergren
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
Whyte&Zettergren is an artistic duo comprising Jamaican dancer Olando Whyte and Swedish visual artist Rut Karin Zettergren. Their collaboration, initiated in 2018 with the project, Herring, Iron, Gunpowder, Humans & Sugar (HIGHS). With the project they visit locations historically linked to the triangular trade, the economic system underpinning the transatlantic slave trade. At these historical sites, Whyte&Zettergren perform live acts with choreography, storytelling, and ceremonial actions. In the acts they use objects crafted from materials extracted, manufactured, or exported from these locations.
In March 2022, the duo launched a space-traveling program for healing Historical Spiritual Vibrations outside a saltfish factory in Reykjavik. A resistance act inspired by Afrofuturism, dub, and speculative fiction, envisioning space as a realm of freedom. This initiative originated from their participation in the collaborative artistic research project ÓNÆM (2020-2022), organized by Bryndís Björnsdóttir. During the project, they explored colonial interlinks between the North and the Caribbean, first focusing on food, and then moving in to research the relationship between plans for new space exploration and colonization, along with their connections to legacies stemming from the Enlightenment.
The duo's artistic works constitute an ongoing investigation into the historical memory held by a place, material, and body. Their process visualizes the entanglement between geographically distant locations, objects, cultures, and times. Through their creative processes, they seek potential methods for healing historical trauma and strive to craft rites that envision possible futures.
Whyte&Zettergren is currently working on their space program along with a video artwork on historical trauma and the collaborative research project Contingency Sample with Bryndís Björnsdóttir that explore extractivism in the era of the new space age. Their works have previously been performed and presented at various significant venues, including the Great House of the sugar plantation Stokes Hall, Fd Molyne’s Sugar Estate, Fort Charles in Port Royal Harbor (JA), Klippan harbor in collaboration with Tredje Våningen, Gammelbo Ironworks, Malongen - The Nordic Art Association (NKF), TEGEN2, Galleri Thomassen, Galleri Gerlesborg (SE), and the Living Art Museum in Reykjavik (IS)
Herring, Iron, Gunpowder, Humans and Sugar
(last edited: 2024)
author(s): Whyte&Zettergren
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
Herring, Iron, Gunpowder, Humans & Sugar (HIGHS). With the project they visit locations historically linked to the triangular trade, the economic system underpinning the transatlantic slave trade. At these historical sites, Whyte&Zettergren perform live acts with choreography, storytelling, and ceremonial actions. In the acts they use objects crafted from materials extracted, manufactured, or exported from these locations.
PD Essaying as Collectie Performative Practice - Emily Huurdeman
(last edited: 2024)
author(s): ega
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
PD Proposal Emily Huurdeman PD Proposal Emily Huurdeman PD Proposal Emily Huurdeman
the archive that i imagine to unlearn the archive
(last edited: 2024)
author(s): Melina Scheuermann
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
This exhibition emerged from my artistic research residency Performing/Archiving ‘Object Lesson’ which I realized in January and February of 2024 in Porto. I departed from the proposal to take up archival documents of my study within the history of education as performative scores and triggers for artistic engagement. In particular, I studied two picture book series of the pedagogical object lesson method (Pt. lições de coisas, Germ. Anschauungsunterricht) that circulated across Europe in the late 19th century and early 20th century. The picture books are traversed by several intersecting discriminations based, amongst others, on gender, race, sex and class.
Through the artistic engagement I reflected on the epistemological, political and ethical implications of archiving and the writing of history and developed an artistic-archival methodology that includes performative, visual, visual-material and textual modes of research. This methodology aims to promote situated, embodied and affective knowledges and is inscribed into feminist and decolonial struggles.
The archive that i imagine to unlearn the archive is an exhibition of the artistic interventions produced as much as the structure of an archive. The exhibition/archive serves as a platform for upcoming workshops that I will promote to practice the artistic-archival methodology that I developed in a collective setting.
I borrow the concept of unlearning from decolonial and postcolonial theory where it is discussed as a practice that challenges the value-based, hegemonic apparatus of knowledge production from the inside. There is a slight irony, seemingly a paradox in name of this archive: The archive that I imagine to unlearn the archive. Unlearning something while repeating, practicing, constructing it? The idea is not repetition, unless it is always considered repetition in variance and in motion, never settled, never fixed. Its name speaks to my attempt to unlearn archiving and archival research while being implied and meshed within.
Morten Qvenild – The HyPer(sonal) Piano Project
(last edited: 2024)
author(s): Morten Qvenild
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
Towards a (per)sonal topography of
grand piano and electronics
How can I develop a grand piano with live electronics through iterated development loops in the cognitive technological environment of instrument, music, performance and my poetics?
The instrument I am developing, a grand piano with electronic augmentations, is adapted to cater my poetics. This adaptation of the instrument will change the way I compose. The change of composition will change the music. The change of music will change my performances. The change in performative needs will change the instrument, because it needs to do different things. This change in the instrument will show me other poetics and change my ideas. The change of ideas demands another music and another instrument, because the instrument should cater to my poetics. And so it goes… These are the development loops I am talking about.
I have made an augmented grand piano using various music technologies. I call the instrument the HyPer(sonal) Piano, a name derived from the suspected interagency between the extended instrument (HyPer), the personal (my poetics) and the sonal result (music and sound). I use old analogue guitar pedals and my own computer programming side by side, processing the original piano sound. I also take out control signals from the piano keys to drive different sound processes. The sound output of the instrument is deciding colors, patterns and density on a 1x3 meter LED light carpet attached to the grand piano. I sing, yet the sound of my voice is heavily processed, a processing decided by what I am playing on the keys. All sound sources and control signal sources are interconnected, allowing for complex and sometimes incomprehensible situations in the instrument´s mechanisms.
Credits:
First supervisor: Henrik Hellstenius
Second Supervisors: Øyvind Brandtsegg and Eivind Buene
Cover photo by Jørn Stenersen, www.anamorphiclofi.com
All other photo, audio and video recording/editing by Morten Qvenild, unless stated.
Resurrecting Dead Darlings Exposition
(last edited: 2024)
author(s): Ryan Mason, Annamari Keskinen
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
Situated within the broader discourse of artistic research, Resurrecting Dead Darlings- A Palindromic Process of Artistic Rebirth amplifies the project's commitment to reinvigorating the dialogue between artists and spectators through the process of engaging with dead darlings. It introduces a multimedia archive tailored to enhance performances by allowing deeper insight into the artistic process—highlighting the evolution from initial concept to performance and the subsequent reinvention. This synthesis encapsulates the project's approach to fostering a dynamic interplay between viewing and creating, where spectators are invited into the intimate spheres of artistic reimagining, and creators are offered reflective distance to view their work through the audience's eyes.
This initiative recognizes the evolving nature of artistic research, emphasizing the move towards integrating research-focused methodologies and embracing diverse forms of creation. Doing so enriches the artist/spectator relationship, positioning it as a foundational element that drives the creative cycle forward. The exposition is a tangible interface for this engagement, offering a conduit for transdisciplinary exploration and a deeper mutual appreciation of the artistic journey. It reaffirms the project's role as a vibrant platform for collaboration, discovery, and the continual reshaping of the artistic experience, echoing Thar Be Dragons’ vision for a participatory and reflective artistic culture.
The exposition is a platform for the artists to document their work, acting as a supportive tool and a gentle invitation to convert embodied thinking into words, which can often prove challenging. It embraces a variety of approaches, including texts, sound recordings, and videos, all designed to exist in an adaptive format that accommodates constant evolution and development. The material within doesn’t necessarily explicate the contents of the exposition but rather works as a collaborative interlocutor. While the primary working language is English, Finnish is also occasionally used.
* Dead Darlings are ideas that, for one reason or another, have been set aside, abandoned, or otherwise not realized. They can be scenes, psychophysical movement spaces, modes of performance, or sets of actions based on fictional situations and settings.
B.O.D.Y. - Between auditory fiction and body-reality
(last edited: 2024)
author(s): Erika Matsunami
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
The exposition "B.O.D.Y. – Between auditory fiction and body-reality" is a summary of my project `B.O.D.Y. 2010´, which was represented from 2009 (ground work) until 2012 and includes theory, artistic practise, procedure, realisation, representation and perception. Thereby, the theories refer to my artworks and are summed up my artistic thesis. The artworks in this exposition are related to the theses of the academic and scientific fields. The artistic research for the audio and visual works is based on the project `B.O.D.Y. 2010´. This project is an intermedia project; it uses media such as photography and drawing, photography and sound installation, and music (sound/sonority/noise) and drawing. The research field is interdisciplinary in visual arts and music within the expanded scope of the transdisciplinary approach.
In the project B.O.D.Y., I used the time-based mediums of sound and performance which are the mixing layers of design, happening and performing. The act, as well as performance, is conceptual and improvisational which evokes, in contrast, the connotation of the objects with the body in real-time.
In the space design for the installation and performance, the horizontal dimension of this installation is variable. Each exhibition space of the installation and performance will be re-designed by the cross-disciplinary approach in the art such as in the representation's concept and artistic approaches.
This digital exposition is likewise a part of the concept and contemplation for the art book B.O.D.Y. about the conceptualisation for a multimedia art book design with intermedia artwork.
(Human studies in the keywords is not the area of studies such as human science.)
Therefore, my artistic practice in sculpture is 'relief' of its spatiality and narrativity in connection with materiality rather than as the symbolism in the post-conceptual era. It is MA (間) as a transmedia between Relief and Byōbu.
ÚHEL POHLEDU_ [experimentální expozice]
(last edited: 2024)
author(s): Matej Hajek
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
Projekt se zabývá experimentálním přístupem ke vzdělávání, který integruje disciplíny hry a učení skrze umělecké dílo. Realizace záměru proběhla formou interaktivní expozice na vzdělávací platformě Centra současného umění DOX. Experiment vychází z konceptu „funkční plastiky" jakožto fyzického objektu, které slouží jako partitury pro interaktivní učení a hru. Fyzickou instalaci doplňuje libreto prezentované virtuálním (AR) průvodcem. Experiment zkoumá praktické využití krajní stimulace smyslů v kombinaci se spekulativním obsahovým sdělením. Tato synergie nabízí unikátní disharmonickou zkušenost, jež má za účel testovat efektivitu stimulace kognitivních funkcí formou podněcování adaptačního mechanismu na hranici komfortní zóny.
PSi Performance and Pedagogy Working Group 2021
(last edited: 2024)
author(s): Adelheid Mers, Rumen Rachev
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
This site will support the working group's online workshops, in June and July 2021.
The new Performance Studies international (PSi) working group Performance & Pedagogy (P&P) offers a forum for sharpening questions and workshopping models that arise from the PSi membership. P&P opens conversations spanning embodied being, doing and knowing across multiple dimensions of pedagogy, such as learning, teaching, and institutional contexts of delivery. Our goal is to discover and expand on urgent topics in dialogue with PSi membership across positionalities. This working group can serve as one support system through which to assess existing and imagine new topologies of P&P practices and methods.
Innen - draußen : Innen - Außen Schonbezüge
(last edited: 2024)
author(s): Lisa Hinterreithner
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
Wir teilen hier den ersten Teil eines Forschungsprozesses, der sich mit schützenden und den Körper umschlingenden, räumlichen Konstrukten beschäftigt. Das Research dient einer thematisch diskursiven und kritischen Kontextualisierung einer Performance-Installation, für die Objekte entwickelt werden, die menschliche Körper in ihrer Singularität oder in kleinen Gruppen „umschlingen“. Dabei denken wir diese Umhüllungen für menschliche und nicht-menschliche Körper im Kontext des feministischen Care-Diskurses.
We share here the first part of a research process that deals with protective and body-enveloping spatial constructs. The research serves a thematically discursive and critical contextualization of a performance installation, for which objects are developed that "envelop" human bodies in their singularity or in small groups. In doing so, we think about these coverings for human and non-human bodies in the context of the feminist care discourse.
Songs We Sing
(last edited: 2024)
author(s): Hans Knut Sveen, Alwynne Pritchard
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
This project began in 2018, with the simple desire to play songs that we love. These could be pieces with strong associations, ones we had enjoyed singing and playing before, or songs we had never sung and that were, perhaps, even new to us. When the songs were written or what genre they might come from was not important. Original instrumentation (piano, harpsichord etc) and received ideas about vocal style were also not a priority. Finding a way of creating renditions with the tools at hand (Alwynne's voice and Hans Knut's harmonium) is what originally defined the project.
[in situ] : re-thinking the role of musical improvisation performance in the context of the ecological and cultural crisis.
(last edited: 2024)
author(s): Barbierato Leonardo
This exposition is in review and its share status is: visible to all.
If there is one thing that complexity theory has taught us, it is to consider phenomena not as isolated events with properties of their own, but to observe them from a different perspective: as relations in a vast network of interdependent systems. In this light, the role of contemporary music performance has changed, and will continue to change, precisely because the context in which it is created and takes place is constantly evolving. Artistic research can provide the tools to be aware of these changes and to actively re-act in this changing context, not by simply transposing the context or its elements into a representational or aesthetic framework, as happened with the avant-gardes of the 20th century, but by breaking cultural boundaries through transpositions into distant fields with isomorphic functional principles. It is precisely because of this characteristic, which reveals the intrinsic interdisciplinarity in artistic research, that it is possible to revolutionize the traditional conception of music performance and not confine it to an aesthetic regime, but rather expand it to include the context. However, since relationships are not unambiguous, it is not just a matter of revising the concept of performance, but also of reviewing the way we experience and live in the context, as artists, as human beings, and as elements of a circuit of which we are only a small part. In this paper, I will first examine how environmental and social changes have been reflected in performative changes and the ways in which the context of the ecological crisis and contemporary performance are interrelated. Then, I will focus on my research project, “[in situ]”, highlighting its site/situation-specificity, flexibility, immersivity, and interactivity, and explaining how it aligns with and differs from other contemporary music performance practices.
Exploring plurality of interpretation through annotations in the long 19th century: musician's perspectives and the FAAM project.
(last edited: 2024)
author(s): Nicholas Cornia
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
The quest of reconciling scholarship and interpretative freedom has always been present in the early music movement discourse, since its 19th century foundations. Confronted with a plurality of performance practices, the performer of Early Music is forced to make interpretative choices, based on musicological research of the sources and their personal taste.
The critical analysis of the sources related to a musical work is often a time-consuming and cumbersome task, usually provided by critical editions made by musicologists. Such editions primarily focus on the composer's agency, neglecting the contribution of a complex network of professions, ranging from editors, conductors, amateur and professional performers and collectors.
The FAAM, Flemish Archive for Annotated Music, is an interdisciplinary project at the Royal Conservatoire Antwerp that wishes to explore the possibilities of annotation analysis on music scores for historically informed musicians.
Annotations are a valuable source of information to recollect the decision-making process of musicians of the past. Especially when original musical recordings are not available, the marks provided by these performers of the past are the most intimate and informative connections between modern and ancient musicians.
Contrary to a purely scholarly historically informed practice approach, based on the controversial concept of authenticity, we wish to allow the modern performers to reconcile their practice with the one of their predecessors in a process of dialectic emulation, where artistic process is improved through the past but does not stagnate in it.
Human Speed in Music
(last edited: 2023)
author(s): Ned McGowan
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
Despite the ubiquitous role of time in most everything we do there is still much to understand about its essence as a function of human perception. One way to learn about the cognisance of time is simply by listening to music. The rhythms, sounds, and silences of music are jacketed by the human condition. The expansive identity of time with its major implications in the realms of science, philosophy, and religion, tells little about our immediate experiences in music. The concept of speed, though, is full of enlightening character.
In this essay, I explore the experience of speed in music with an artistic research methodology. Based on my artistic and pedagogic experience, the arguments consider areas of performance, composition, and perception, and references are made to neurobiological research. A multitude of perspectives are presented here, such as an explication of speed, a study on tempo 10 bpm, the relationship between emotions and our perception of the speed of time, plus many musical examples, including compositions, tests of duration and maximum speed perception and a full range of musical speed.
The goal is to reveal properties about musical speed to provide a clearer concept for the reader to experience, interpret and conceptualize for herself.
HOW TO (NOT) PRODUCE - Fragmente zu sorgender Kunst als Gegenkultur
(last edited: 2023)
author(s): Lotte Dohmen
connected to: EU4ART_differences
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
„after the revolution who is going to pick up the garbage on Monday morning?
...
what is the relationship between maintenance and freedom?
what is the relationship between maintenance and life‘s dreams?“
- fragt Mierle Ladermann Ukeles in ihrem „Manifesto for Maintenance Art“ (1969). Als alleinerziehende Mutter und Künstlerin im New York der 70er Jahre, bleibt ihr aufgrund ausufernder Sorgeverpflichtungen der Zutritt zu Kunsträumen verwehrt. Die Beziehung zwischen instandhaltenden und schöpferischen Prozessen ist eine konkurrierende, nach wie vor. Sorgearbeit muss aus der künstlerischen Sphäre ausgelagert, verschleiert oder wegorganisiert werden, darf in Förderanträgen nicht auftauchen und steht in zeitlicher Konkurrenz zur kreativen Arbeit. Neoliberale Dispositive führen dazu, dass Produktion grundsätzlich höhere Wertschätzung erfährt als Erhaltung, doch wo nähern sich die beiden Bereiche einander an?
Ukulese Ladermann konterte die Zurückweisung mit einem feministischen Manifest, in dem sie Windeln wechseln, Wäsche waschen, Wohnung putzen und Essen kochen, all diese sorgenden Tätigkeiten zur Kunst erklärte. Die künstlerische Recherchearbeit folgt diesen Spuren der Maintenance Art in die Gegenwart, versammelt weitere zeitgenössische best practice Beispiele, reflektiert anekdotisch über aus-Fehlern-lernt-man-Produktionen und versucht sich an einer nicht-hierarchischen Versammlung dieser Fragmente.
Fragmente, die die Dichotomie zwischen Lebensträumen, kreativer Selbstverwirklichung und Freiheit auf der einen Seite und reproduktiver Arbeit, die die Dinge am Laufen hält auf der anderen in Frage stellen. Fragmente, die nach der Kunst im Müßigen, im Notwendigen und Unproduktiven suchen, die Strategien entwickeln entwerfend und gleichzeitig regenerativ zu Arbeiten. Fragmente, die sich um den Prozess sorgen und nicht um das Produkt.